Spiritual Disciplines: Prayer
Sermon Number 10
March 2, 2008
There’s a story about a small town that had been historically “dry,” it was alcohol free. A bar was going to open on Main Street and upon hearing the news, the only church in town organized an all-night prayer meeting, asking God to intervene. The congregation told people in the community about their plans and while they were praying lightning struck the bar and it burned to the ground.
The owner of the bar sued the church, claiming the prayers of the congregation were responsible for burning down the bar. The church hired a lawyer, claiming they were not responsible.
After hearing both sides, the judge said, “no matter how I decide this case, one thing is clear -- the tavern owner believes in prayer, while the church doesn’t.”
Friends, are we a church that believes in prayer? If the same thing happened to our church, would we take responsibility for the answer received or would we think it was something. . . like a coincidence?
In order for a tree to be full, healthy, and growing it must send its roots deep into the earth. For you and I, our roots must be firmly planted in Jesus. He is the vine and we are the branches. Our behavior (what we say and do) and our character (integrity), are directly related to the invisible part, our roots, our spiritual life, our relationship with Jesus. When our spiritual roots are shallow we will struggle with our behavior and our character because they are directly linked to our spiritual life. If we are going to experience the abundant life God desires to bless us with, then we need to grow spiritually. As our roots go down in Christ, our behavior and character begins to change as we grow more and more like Christ.
If we are not changing to be more like Christ, we are not growing spiritually. We have stagnated, we are root bound. A plant that is root bound may look good, but it will now grow, and eventually it will start to suffer and die. Fortunately, God wants us to have an abundant fruitful life so to help nudge us along God has given us practices, or disciplines, to help us grow spiritually, these are the same practices Jesus did when he walked this earth.
By themselves, Spiritual Disciplines will not change anything in your life, instead they make us available to God to be changed by Him. This is what we have been talking about for the past 9 weeks, as we are looking at many different Spiritual Disciplines, designed to help us become more Christlike, as we move closer to Him. And today we are looking at prayer.
Richard Foster wrote, “Prayer catapults us onto the frontier of the spiritual life. Of all the Spiritual Disciplines, prayer is the most central because it ushers us into perpetual communion with the Father. . . Real prayer is life creating and life changing.”
That is a great statement from Foster. Prayer launches us into the spiritual world as we seek to have a conversation with God, so that we can communicate with God. When we pray, we are engaging God in one of the deepest conversations we will ever have. Prayer opens the door to our learning and understanding what God wants for us in our lives, the lives of our family and friends, the lives of people in our community and ultimately when we engage in prayer, we have the opportunity to call upon the most powerful person in our lives, God. We have the opportunity to change the world, along with ourselves, if we are willing to open ourselves to God.
I find it interesting that the disciples could have asked Jesus for just about anything in the world. They walked with Him for 3 years, they saw Him in action, yet, Luke tells us “One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples spoke to him. “Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1).
Isn’t it interesting that these 12 men would ask Jesus - - “teach us to pray.” They had seen miracle after miracle, healing after healing – the blind were able to see, the lame could walk, the deaf could hear, the dead could breathe again; the hungry were fed. They could have said, “Lord help us feed the 5,000 like you did” or “Lord, give us the wisdom to say the right things at the right time.”
These men grew up in the Temple, they knew all about prayer, the times of prayer and the Sabbath prayers. They weren’t just looking for an easy answer. They noticed something different about Jesus and His prayer life. They saw Him pray at different times of the day and in different situations. They saw Him pray during crises, when He experienced need, when He was tired, when He wanted reconnection and wisdom from His Father - - the response from Jesus was to pray.
The disciples noticed Jesus looked forward to prayer and hungered for it. They saw that somehow prayer fed Jesus’ soul the way food nourished their stomachs. As a result, the disciples wanted what Jesus had, they wanted their heart, soul and mind to be nourished by prayer - - in the same way Jesus was nourished by prayer.
So, how do we get started in prayer? I believe many people struggle with the starting point of prayer; along with what to pray for, how long do I pray, and so on. This doesn’t even include the deeper issues of prayer, God’s response and presence to our prayers.
Many of us say we want to pray and believe it’s effective, but often times we feel defeated before we even start to pray; or we start and a few minutes later we find our minds wandering about our grocery list, last nights ball game, the housework, will the meeting go well, the hungry rumblings in our stomachs and a myriad of other thoughts and wanderings. John Ortberg calls our wandering minds, “Spiritual Attention Deficit Disorder.
I find myself doing this. I start praying and suddenly I’m rehearsing my sermon, or my heart, spirit and mind begin to wander; or my body becomes tired. So, what do we do when we catch ourselves?
A number of years ago I read the book, The Gift of Peace by Cardinal Joseph Bernadin which helped me when I found my mind wandering. One of the high points of the book was Bernadin talking about the time he was the Cardinal in the Cincinnati diocese. He and a group of priests were committed to pray alone for the first hour of the day. Bernadin explained ‘one hour was a long time and his mind would wander during his time of prayer and devotion.’ The great thing I learned from Bernadin was to cut yourself some slack. If you get off topic, and you think about your groceries, or a message you need to give to someone, don’t berate yourself, just catch yourself and move back into your prayer.
It’s a good suggestion, too often we stifle ourselves, and don’t allow God to work through our shortcomings. We think our prayers need to have wonderful and flowery words, but if that isn’t you, don’t worry about it. God wants you to talk to Him just as you are, not as you think someone else would like you to be.
We think our prayers should be a certain number of minutes long, and if we don’t hit our time limit we feel like we’ve bombed on our prayer. The truth of the matter is that when Christians were surveyed, the average amount of prayer time was 5 minutes per Christian per day. That’s not too much, yet when we start out, we feel guilty that we have not been praying, so we set lofty goals.
Especially when hear of so many people who were great praying saints. Protestant reformer Martin Luther said, “I have so much business I cannot get on without spending three hours daily in prayer.” John Wesley spent two hours per day in prayer. Adoniram Judson, a Baptist missionary would pray 7 times per day. At dawn, 9, 12, 3, 6, 9, and midnight.”
We hear these stories and we begin to think we should be doing the same thing. On day one we say we will pray for one hour, and after 3 minutes, we’re prayed out.
And when we fall short, we tend to beat ourselves up and just give up from praying. But that is not what we are to do.
My suggestion is to start slow, start with 3 or 5 minutes, no more and no less, but you need to start and before we are done, I will give you a number of prayer patterns you can try. You don’t just wake up one day and say next week ‘I’m going to run in a marathon.’ That wouldn’t work, instead you set that as a goal and you begin to train. Maybe you start by walking for one mile and work your way to the point when running a marathon is a possibility. In the same way, baseball is in spring training, and these athletes who could catch fly balls and ground balls in their sleep are going over the fundamentals again and again. When we begin thinking about our need to pray, we need to start with the fundamentals, the basics and begin to strengthen ourselves as we seek to draw closer to God in prayer.
Then we hear Paul’s command to “pray without ceasing” in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 and we again set ourselves up for failure, because as the day moves on we realize how many times we’ve forgotten to pray about one thing after another. So, it can become easy or maybe a better word to use is convenient to just give up on prayer.
But don’t do that!! So, how should we read this passage? Let me give you another way to look at it.
The way Donald Whitney describes these words of Paul is very freeing ~
If talking with and thinking of God can’t be in the forefront of your mind, it should always be peeking over and ready to take the place of what you are concentrating on. You might think of praying without ceasing as communicating with God on one line while also taking calls on another. Even while you are talking on the other line, you never lose your awareness of the need to return your attention to the Lord. So, praying without ceasing means you never stop conversing with God; you simply have frequent interruptions.
That is a great way to look at that verse. Just keep your phone lines open. Another way is to view prayer as having a conversation on a walkie-talkie with God. Even when we are busy doing something, we still have the walkie-talkie on so that when God speaks to us, or we speak to Him, we are ready, able and willing to listen or to speak to Him.
When we pray, we sometimes feel like we need to tap the shoulder of a very busy God, who needs to be reminded of something important He is supposed to do. We sense we need to nudge God along by our prayers, telling Him what to do, but we behave as though the outcome depends upon us. We ask God to do what we want Him to do and then we persist to ask God to conform to our will. When the answers don’t come as we want it to be, we usually end up angry at God.
A different approach would be to slow ourselves down and begin the process of learning to listen to God, so that instead of our tapping God on His shoulder, we allow God to come to us and tap us on the shoulder and He gets our attention.
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In the book, Character Forged from Conflict, Gary Preston wrote, “Back when the telegraph was the fastest means of long-distance communication, there was a story about a young man who applied for a job as a Morse code operator. When he arrived, he entered a large, noisy office. In the background a telegraph clacked away. A sign on the receptionist’s counter instructed job applicants to fill out a form and wait until they were summoned to enter the inner office.
The young man completed his form and sat down with seven other applicants. After a few minutes, the young man stood up, crossed the room to the door of the inner office, and walked right in. The other applicants wondered what was going on. Why had this man been so bold? They talked among themselves and took satisfaction in assuming the young man who went into the office would be reprimanded for his presumption and would be disqualified for the job.
Within a few minutes the young man emerged from the inner office escorted by the interviewer, who announced to the other applicants, “Gentlemen, thank you very much for coming, but the job has been filled by this young man.”
The other applicants began grumbling and asked, "Wait a minute, he was the last one to come in, and we never even got a chance to be interviewed. Yet he got the job. That’s not fair."
The employer responded, "All the time you’ve been sitting here, the telegraph has been ticking out the following message in Morse code: "If you understand this message, then come right in. The job is yours." None of you heard it or understood it. This young man did. So the job is his."
That guy was in tune with what was happening around Him. Are we? Are we aware of what God wants for our life and are we following through? If we are, go to Him in boldness and ask for what you feel is right to ask for. If not, then take the next few moments to dedicate yourself to seeking to follow God’s leadings and will for you. Ask me for help and I will be thrilled to help you become more intimate with God. It is my hope and desire that we would be a church that can discern God’s leading in our lives and church.
I feel like I have barely touched the surface of prayer, but our time is coming to a close and I want to give you some very practical steps, some ideas and ways to enter into prayer. Some people are able to just jump in and away they go, most, however, need some way to enter in, so here are some ideas or patterns for prayer -
You can use these acronyms as a way to enter into prayer ~
Adoration Praise
Confession Repentance
Thanksgiving Ask
Supplication Yield
These are two pretty easy to remember acronyms. They are similar, yet have very profound differences. You will also note that many Biblical prayers start off with praise to God and follow similar patterns. We see it in many of the psalms, in Nehemiah’s prayer in Nehemiah 1; as well as in Daniel’s prayer in Daniel 9.
Whether you are stuck or not, this is one effective way to lead yourself into prayer.
I equate ADORATION and PRAISE.
So, you start your prayer the way Nehemiah did, when he said, “O LORD, God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and obey his commands” (Nehemiah 1:5).
Nehemiah recognizes God’s greatness and just how awesome God is and he tells God exactly what he is thinking. This is how the prayer starts, he lifts up God’s name in praise. When you start out praying, instead of rushing to what you want God to do for you, start by telling God why you believe He is so awesome. Tell him how you adore Him. Remember the word adore means, “to love deeply and intensely, to regard with a deep rapturous love.”
Try expressing that to God first, praise Him, worship Him, give Him the reverence due Him.
Then move on to confession. It’s what Nehemiah did next, as well. In the next verse Nehemiah said, “6 I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father’s house, have committed against you.”
He moved on to confession. He confessed the sins of the nation, his sins, as well as the sins of his family. He wanted to make his life right with God, so that when he did lay his needs and petitions at God’s door, his heart, soul, mind and body were right with God. We don’t like to admit our wrongdoings, our mistakes, especially our sins. Confession is not easy, which is why it is a Spiritual Discipline we will talk about next week.
Nehemiah admitted the people had acted wickedly and had been disobedient to God and in essence deserved their exile. He showed his humility in humbling himself and admitting his and the nations sinfulness before God.
Next in our progression is where the two acronyms diverge. The ACTS acronym next has us giving thanks to God. At this point we would have PRAISED God, confessed to God, now we THANK God for the blessings and life He has given us. We should look at our lives and see what is good. How has God blessed us. This causes us to focus on what we do have, not on what we don’t have!
The third step of the PRAY acronym is the same as the final step of the ACTS acronym. We are called to ASK, or make our requests know to God in what is called SUPPLICATIONS. Supplication simply means to humbly ask, implore or even beg for something.
It’s a this stage where Nehemiah asked God for something, he asked God to give him success in going to the king so that he may return to Jerusalem and help the rebuilding of the wall.
For you and I, it is at this stage where we do as Paul said, “we make our requests known to God.” We tell God what our needs are and what we need.
I like the final stage of the PRAY acronym because it reminds me of the need to YIELD to God’s will. I know that Scripture tells me, ‘if I ask in His name it will be done for me.’ but it means I need to know what God’s will is, and in order to know His will I must be so connected to Him, and so close that it is not guess work, it is not a wing and a prayer, but it is my conviction that God wants something for me and I can confidently make that request, believing this is God’s will, not my will. That is what the YIELD means for me.
